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  • The Holy Spirit in the World: A Global Conversation
  • Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier (bio)
The Holy Spirit in the World: A Global Conversation. By Kirsteen Kim. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2007. 210 pp. $25.00

In this compelling book, Kirsteen Kim proposes a new mission theology of the Holy Spirit. Admirable in its breadth and depth, Kim connects ecumenical, inter-religious, and intercultural concerns with missiology, spirituality, and systematic theology of the Holy Spirit. Ultimately, she constructs a pneumatology of many spirits and their discernment, arguing convincingly that such a theology will be able to engage our globalizing and post-modern world more adequately.

Kim's central concern arises out of the recent debates over the Holy Spirit that have emerged from the World Council of Churches (WCC). In a now infamous controversy at the Seventh Assembly of the WCC in 1991, held in Canberra, Australia, Chung Hyun Kyung, a Korean eco-feminist theologian, presented her plenary address as a Korean shaman and performed a spirit calling ritual. The address caused an uproar, with both strong support and emphatic condemnation. Indeed, a special session had to be convened because of delegate concerns. Kirsteen Kim argues that this controversy over Chung's address reveals very different ways of understanding spirit(s) and the Holy Spirit, and could be the stimulus needed for a renewed theology of Spirit. Kim's book is therefore an effort to tease out those different perspectives and understand them in light of their own historical, cultural, and social contexts. In doing so, Kim highlights the important issues at stake in any missiology of Spirit and illustrates how a global conversation can challenge (and enrich) traditional European theology.

Kim begins by mapping out western pre-modern and modern pneumatologies and biblical language of "spirit," in order to diagnose the current predicament of the spirit in the West. She traces Roman Catholic tendencies to locate the Spirit in the church to Augustine, Protestant tendencies to locate the Spirit in the heart of the believer to the Protestant reformers, and secular reinterpretations of Spirit to Kant, Schleiermacher, and Hegel. Moreover, Kim identifies three significant starting points for finding spirit in scripture: the "pentecostal" approach, which begins with the outpouring of the Spirit in Pentecost, the "catholic" approach, which looks to the Spirit's work in the life/ministry of Jesus, and the "orthodox" approach, which begins with creation and takes a cosmic perspective. Through these surveys, Kim re-grounds spirit and spirituality in their complex and robust traditions. She very rightfully recognizes the potential power of pneumatology in the West—a society yearning for "experiences of all kinds" (2)—yet also points out that the contemporary West has largely stripped "spirit" and "spirituality" of their scriptural, cosmic, and trinitarian roots, instead psychologizing, paranormalizing, individualizing, or consumerizing them. She therefore seeks to retrieve the deep significance of spirit and construct new ways of speaking about spirit(s) and Spirit that can help us to encounter the many spirits of a globalizing world, respond to plural perspectives and religious traditions, and discern what powers/spirits to support or resist, and how.

Kim then turns to twentieth-century Western theology and Orthodox mission pneumatologies. Kim contrasts Western missiological approaches with systematic approaches to the Spirit in the world. She demonstrates that mission pneumatology has developed largely apart from systematic theology in the West; and thus there has typically not been an integrated or holistic theology of the mission of the Spirit. [End Page 103]

In surveying Orthodox understandings of the mission of the Spirit, she presents the history of pneumatological distinctions between East and West and important Orthodox approaches to the Spirit. Rather than the Western preoccupation with God ad intra, Orthodox thought has been largely oriented on the Trinity ad extra , and how the Trinity brings about salvation in the world. Thus, Orthodox thought has shown more interest in the mission of the Spirit in the world. She helpfully contextualizes Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox reaction to Chung's address at the Canberra Assembly, pointing out that part of the Orthodox concern with Chung's Spirit-language was that it seemed divorced from Jesus-language. This concern to ground pneumatology in trinitarian...

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